A wee plug for some nice guitar people

I don’t play as much as I used to, or would like to – RSI tends to rear its ugly head fairly quickly – but one of my most treasured possessions is my electric guitar, a 1989 Fender Telecaster. I bought it second-hand a loooooong time ago, and I’ve been meaning to get it sorted out for several years now: the pickup switch was wonky and the guitar itself needed some serious TLC. And of course, the longer I left it the more work it needed.

I finally decided to bite the bullet a few weeks ago and asked around for recommendations, because I don’t even know which guitar shops are still going in Glasgow. I was pointed towards Strung Out Guitars, a wee place across the road from the 13th Note venue. They’re very, very busy – my repair and setup took a fortnight because they had so many guitars to get through – and I can see why: my Telecaster came back looking and playing better than it has since the day I bought it.

They’re a nice bunch of people too, and they clearly love what they do. If you need guitar-y things done, give them a shout.

“You’re all our bitches now”

Good news for the BPI: BT and TalkTalk’s appeal against the Digital Economy Act has been rejected. It turns out that the Act is perfectly fair and decent and nothing to worry about whatsoever.

Amazingly, I have an opinion about that.

“Shareholders and customers of BT and TalkTalk might ask why so much time and money has been spent challenging the act to help reduce the illegal traffic on their networks,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said. “You’re all our bitches now.”

OK, he didn’t say that last bit. But it’s true all the same. If BT and TalkTalk don’t appeal, we’re stuffed.

Record companies: sell records? Us? Don’t be silly

An illuminating piece by David Hepworth:

When you have built up some anticipation around the release of anything, what on earth is the use of delaying that release and allowing that anticipation to fade into disinterest? Public attention is a finite resource and it is quickly diverted on to something else.

Record labels demand all the money in the world. Literally

Here’s one for fans of idiocy and greed: in their case against file sharing network LimeWire, record labels are demanding sums of money that could exceed $75 trillion.

The entire planet’s gross domestic product is $69 trillion per year.

What are they thinking? Let The Register explain.

The idea that the industry could ask for trillions in damages apparently springs from a previous success against Usenet in 2009, in which copying of a relatively small number of works (878) was multiplied by the maximum penalty to arrive at a damages bill close to US$6.6 million.

“An opportunity for Gary to take cheap shots at a band he doesn’t like and sneak in a mention for one he does”

Jon Bon Jovi reckons Steve Jobs has killed the music business. Sometimes I love my job.

By a happy coincidence, I reckon Jon Bon Jovi represents everything that’s wrong with the music business. I think there’s a reason why Bon Jovi albums don’t sell like they used to.

It’s because they’re rubbish.

And thanks to technology, they can’t get away with it any more.

Bits won’t save music

In the early 2000s, when internet piracy was killing the recorded music business, some record companies had an idea. “Let’s keep doing what we’re doing,” they suggested. “But let’s do it with slightly better sound quality and a much bigger price tag”.

Enter DVD Audio and Super Audio CD. They offered better sound quality than CD, and they were miles ahead of the 128Kbps MP3s being swapped on Napster and Kazaa. But as formats they’re footnotes, loved by the odd audiophile and completely ignored by the mainstream.

Meanwhile, piracy continues and the business of recorded music appears to be in terminal decline. Not to worry. Some record companies have an idea.

“Let’s keep doing what we’re doing”, they’re suggesting. “But let’s do it with slightly better sound quality and a much bigger price tag.”

I think I’ve heard this song before.

More cowbell

This time it’s not about a physical format; it’s about a bitrate. Labels are considering providing music in 24-bit format, and they think we’ll be willing to pay more for it.

We won’t.

There are three reasons for that. The first is that people who don’t currently pay for 16-bit music on CD aren’t suddenly going to go “woah! Eight more bits! I renounce my piratical ways!”

The second is that there isn’t that big a difference between 16-bit and 24-bit anyway, especially not if you’re listening on Apple earbuds, through your Xbox 360 or via your mobile phone.

I’m told that the key music provider for The Kids these days is YouTube, which happily combines points one and two: we’ve got a generation whose expect music to be there for free, and they’re listening to it on crappy laptop speakers.

The third reason is that a lot of popular music is so ridiculously compressed that better quality files will actually make it sound worse. I once listened to Oasis’s debut album on a stupidly expensive bit of audiophile kit, and the recording was so harsh it felt like my ears were being stabbed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ famously overcooked Californication sounds progressively worse the better the audio equipment, and any music that’s been involved in the the loudness wars will suffer from the same problem.

It’s not all bad, certainly, but music that’s been tweaked to sound really loud on clothes shops’ PAs, Capital FM and YouTube is not music that’s going to enthral you with its subtlety and grasp of dynamics. For the overwhelming majority of popular music, moving to 24-bit won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

What we’re seeing here is an old music business strategy: take what you’ve got and try and sell it in a slightly different wrapper. It worked with CD, so they tried it again with DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. That wasn’t so successful, and I’m willing to bet that 24-bit downloads won’t be either.

I blogged a link to some graphs about the decline of the music business a few days ago. The message from the numbers is simple: the music business profits depend on albums, and nobody’s really fussed about albums any more. Boosting bitrates – and upping prices – won’t do anything to change that.

It’s the end of the recorded music business as we know it

Not a surprise, I know, but the graphs in this article are still eye-opening. Short version: the recorded music business makes its money from albums; people don’t buy albums any more.

If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like

Long-time readers will know of my borderline-obsessive love of Irish band The 4 of Us, so I’m quite delighted to see that the solo album from their singer, Brendan Murphy, has made its way to iTunes. If you like low-key, late-night acoustic songs, it’s definitely worth your time. More details and previews here.

Elbow: Lippy Kids

I really like this. Sorry if I’ve already bored you with it on Facebook.

Major record labels in “sensible move” shocker

Sensible doesn’t mean timely – this should have happened about ten years ago – but at long last two major record labels have wised up: they’ll no longer release records to radio months and months and months before anyone can buy them.

David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: “Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation. It’s out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance.”

Better late than never, eh?